New look for old facility

IU hopes construction will attract football talent

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. - The late Terry Hoeppner encouraged Indiana University football players and fans to help "defend the rock."

After $30 million worth of polishing, his friend and successor as head coach, Bill Lynch, will have a gem to protect when the 2009 season opens on the Thursday night before Labor Day, Sept. 3, against Eastern Kentucky.

The north end of Memorial Stadium is now enclosed — 100,000 square feet that includes offices for coaches, a team auditorium, strength and conditioning space, meeting rooms and a Hoosier Hall of Champions featuring historic displays, plus a 500-seat banquet room.

From the outside, fans can view twin towers both from within the stadium and from the bypass access to the north. The team will emerge from its locker room up a tunnel and into the north end zone, creating a more dramatic entrance.

"It's an amazing building," said Lynch. "It's really the first major improvement since Memorial Stadium was built in the 1960s.

"That makes us a little bit late, but now we have an absolutely showcase facility. There's a 'wow' factor to it, and when we're recruiting against teams from the Big Ten or the SEC (Southeastern Conference), we're going to have a leg up."

IU athletics appear to be on solid ground as they emerge from the Kelvin Sampson scandal and try to recover from a subpar football season. Fred Glass, who replaced Rick Greenspan as athletics director last January, said during the IU Tailgate Tour that finances are in the black.

But Glass also understands that better football — and more ticket sales — would be a major enhancement to the department. So the Memorial Stadium project is viewed as an investment rather than an expense. Money, incidentally, is coming from bonds backed by the athletic department revenue, plus from the "For the Glory of Old IU" fundraising campaign.

"Our biggest challenge will be to put Indiana football on the map," Glass said. "All those empty seats mean lost revenue. Ohio State, Penn State and Michigan all make more in one game than we do in a whole season."

IU had eight home games last season, when the team went 3-9 punctuated by a 62-10 pounding at Purdue, averaging 31,782 fans per game. In four conference games on the road — at Minnesota, Illinois, Penn State and Purdue — the average was 68,733.

Memorial Stadium has added about 5,000 seats to bring capacity to around 54,000, and attendance should improve for six home games. While Eastern Kentucky and Western Michigan might not be much of a draw, the conference visitors include Ohio State, Illinois, Wisconsin and Purdue.

"It's a step-by-step process, but we're going to put a team on the field that people should want to come out and support," said Lynch, who led IU to its first bowl game in 16 seasons two years ago.

Lynch took a page from Hoeppner's playbook last spring, visiting fraternities and sororities to urge students to take advantage of $30 student season tickets — and to leave the "tailgate zone" south of the stadium and come in for some football.

He also has been more visible around the state, joining the tailgate tour at most stops and urging alumni and other supporters to get behind his team. Basketball coach Tom Crean has joined in, figuring that the more excitement over IU sports the better for all involved.

"You see every day how hard those guys are working," Crean said, referring to Lynch, his assistants and their players, "and you learn to appreciate it."

It may still take a while to find the players to fit the facility that will open next month. IU was hard-hit by injuries last season and took a big step backward.

The talented-but-troubled Kellen Lewis, already moved from quarterback to receiver, was dismissed at the end of last semester (and has since announced plans to play at Division II Valdosta State in Georgia).

Lynch feels good about Ben Chappell, last year's part-time starting quarterback, and a group of talented receivers that include tight end Max Dedmond from Evansville. He believes a young offensive line, beaten and bruised last year, will be much improved. And the defense, with a pair of all-Big Ten caliber ends and a more healthy secondary, should be better.

But it's down the line, hopefully not too far, when the new facility will pay dividends. The weight room itself is 25,000 square feet, almost eight times larger than the current facility beneath the west grandstand. The academic support center will go from 2,500 square feet in Assembly Hall to 18,000 square feet of vacated space on the east side of the stadium, and will include more computers, classrooms, study areas and tutoring rooms for athletes in all sports.

Combined with the almost adjacent Mellencamp Pavilion, the indoor practice area funded mostly by old rocker and Bloomington icon John Mellencamp, the revamped stadium gives IU football a first-class look.

And the north end zone isn't the only construction project on the athletics end of campus. Southeast of Memorial Stadium, in what was a parking area for Assembly Hall, a $25 million basketball practice facility is taking shape. Also, a new baseball/softball complex is in the pipeline.

The men's and women's basketball teams have had to share practice times on the main court of the nearly 40-year-old Assembly Hall, but soon will have more options. The opening is scheduled for January.

Crean, the relentless recruiter, won't hesitate to use the facility to his advantage — just as Lynch is utilizing the new football digs.

"Kids are kids; they like new and shiny," Crean said. "We love the fact that we can talk tradition, that we can talk exposure, that we can talk opportunity. Now we can talk facilities, too."

That's what Hoeppner was doing, encouraging trustees to approve the project even as he battled a brain tumor that eventually would kill him. He died, in fact, on the day that ground was broken for the football facility — a ceremony that his widow, Jane, insisted go on as planned.

"It's everything that coach envisioned it would be," Jane Hoeppner told the Indianapolis Star after a tour of the facilities. "The way it looks today is exactly what he had in mind. What this can do for recruiting is off the charts. I think the best way to say it is that it really looks like a Big Ten stadium now."